The Foxtel-owned sports app Kayo has been rebuilt from the ground up in a radical overhaul that improves the experience for mobile users. The app has been rebuilt by a team of hardcore sports fans, using best-practice engineering standards set by some of the world’s leading app experiences.
Starting this week, a small number of users will find the Kayo app installed on their mobile devices will update to the new version of the app. From a look and feel perspective, it looks more slick with some changes in terms of functionality. Existing users will still recognise that it is the Kayo app at first glance with a “the same, but different and better” approach to the redesign.
The Kayo team will be testing and improving the app based on the immediate feedback from early public beta users and will be rolling out the app to include all users over the next month.
The new Kayo Sports app
It would be incorrect to say that the new Kayo reflects a mobile-first strategy. That’s not quite what the redesign is about, but it does recognise that online sports viewing behaviour is shifting and the app is evolving with this behaviour. The team recognise that viewership through connected televisions is still the main way that most Kayo viewers are watching sports on the app and that isn’t expected to change anytime soon, but with mobile consumption on the rise, Kayo needed to better serve those handheld viewers.
The first thing users will notice is that the new Kayo Sports app has a lot of functionality that is inspired by social video apps like Instagram and TikTok. At the top of the page, you can see an interface that may as well be Instagram Stories, but for sports. Click on one of those ‘stories’, which are segmented by sport, and it will take you through to a really compelling feature – what Kayo is calling Moments. You can also access Moments from the menu navigation at the bottom of the app, which will give you a Tik-Tok-like vertical feed of videos from across a broad range of sports.
Moments are produced during sporting games/matches, offering clips of outstanding moments available for viewers in close to real-time during the broadcast. The clips are mobile-friendly clips of up-to 30 seconds in length. Kayo users watching a Moment can also click a Watch Now button to take them into the broadcast.
Moments are identified using AI systems, speeding up the process to make them quickly available to users of the app. The AI is trained to look for great moments aligned with points being scored or other identified metrics, along with car crashes and other expected exciting events on screen. If there’s anything out of the ordinary that the Kayo team are thrilled by and want to share in the Moments tab, they can then be added to the feed. It’s AI with a sprinkle of human.
Coming soon to the app will be greater social sharing, enabling users to share clips with their mates. If your friend doesn’t have a Kayo Sports subscription, they will still be able to watch the clip. It’ll serve as not only a great way to share clips with friends, but also as an onboarding tool for Kayo.
As Foxtel go to market with the refreshed Kayo Sports app, it is focused on:
Introducing the Moments Player – A fresh way to catch up on the action. The new Moments Player offers a scrollable feed of highlights, making it easy to relive key plays and stay updated at your own pace.
Stories That Bring You Closer to the Game – Stay in the loop with dynamic, bite-sized stories capturing the energy and excitement of live sports. Perfect for quick updates between plays or on the go.
A New Home for Live Action – The reimagined homepage places fans at the centre of the excitement. With hero banners and intuitive call-to-action buttons, it’s never been easier to jump into the action and stay there.
Enhanced Favourites – Fans preferred content now takes centre stage. The app will prompt users to add favourites to improve their personalised recommendations.
Smarter Navigation, Seamless Streaming – Find exactly what you’re looking for with enhanced search capabilities and streamlined page layouts. Less time searching, more time watching.
Changing sports consumption
As viewers have become increasingly more mobile in their media consumption and less reliant on legacy, linear broadcast, new viewing behaviours are being adopted. Younger viewers are less live sports-obsessed than older viewers and will focus more on individual sports stars than teams. And while they are watching live sports less, they are devoting time to fantasy sports, sporting podcasts, social media, and short-form video platforms.
These behaviours are clearly front-of-mind with the new Kayo Sports mobile redesign. You can see it with all of the areas the app now focuses on. It is less about live and more about engaging with the other experiential aspects of sport with an emphasis on the clips.
The app isn’t abandoning live at all – far from it. The redesign makes it easier than ever to find out when events are being staged and to sort it based on your interests. The revamped Fixtures functionality and high visibility of live and upcoming events speak to the live access Kayo offers.
A focus on younger, sports-connected viewers may also prove more profitable for Kayo Sports. Research from Ampere Analytics has found younger viewers spend more money on live sports. Across the US and five major European markets, Ampere found that the average sports fan is willing to pay $28.42 per month for all-you-can-eat sports access, but for 18-34 fans, this figure rises 27 per cent to $36.05. For those who engage with ancillary sports content (ie the podcasts, clips, fantasy sports, etc), those aged 18-34 fantasy are willing to spend an average of $43.99 per month.
Inside the rebuild
Leading the project to rebuild Kayo is the Emmy Award-winning Tom Blaxland. He is the Executive Director of Product and joined Foxtel Group in August last year. In his role he oversees Foxtel’s streaming products, including Kayo Sports and Binge.
Blaxland joined Foxtel after working with NBCUniversal on its Peacock app and the NBCU/Paramount joint venture SkyShowtime, which operates in 22 countries across Europe.
Blaxland grew up in Australia and started out his career in the 90s as a music engineer and producer for bands like Custard, Died Pretty, and Things of Stone and Wood. Discovering Pro Tools in the early 90s led him to web design and then to learn coding for sites and apps.
After an extensive career in the US, he moved back to Australia for love. He wasn’t following a lover – it was his passion for Kayo that brought him back.
Our conversation began by addressing a whispered-about rumour surrounding the use of Kayo technology in an abandoned 2024/25 joint venture between Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery. It’s an interesting starting point because it highlights just how unique a product Kayo is.
Mediaweek: You began developing the new version of the app under the previous ownership. It has been said that there was a moment in the US when Fox was building out the Venu Sports app that they were looking to use the Kayo app as its foundation. This rebuild… was there any consideration of this being involved with that Venu launch?
Tom Blaxland: If you look at what Kayo is, it is a unique sports app in the world. There’s no other app that really has the breadth and depth of sport that Kayo does. If you go around the world looking at other apps, you’ll see content rights are split across a lot of different companies, and so it’s rare to have the concentration of sports in one app.
I think that is why it is so successful in Australia. The owners of the company were like, “Well, could we ever do this in America?”
They realised they didn’t have the rights to the whole package and so that’s why it became kind of a joint venture between a few companies in America.
But really, the idea was: Kayo is so good, can we just take that idea and reproduce it in America? There were a few people who worked on both, yeah.
Kayo’s a really great tentpole, a really great basis for a sports app, and that’s why people want to copy it. But they just don’t have the rights that translate to other countries around the world.
Mediaweek: The new Kayo app was completely internally built?
Tom Blaxland: Yes, it is. We partnered with vendors for additional support during the project, but the initiative was led entirely by our internal technology and product staff here in Artarmon, with more than 50 people involved across the project.
I think it’s important to, if you’re building something new like this, to have everyone in the same building. We’ve spent a lot of time with our designers, our product folks, our technical folks, sitting on a whiteboard together, figuring out the best way to do something.
And then, obviously, we have all these sports experts here, they’re also in the building. So a really collaborative, in-person experience to build unique products here is, again, a little unusual, and pretty awesome to work in a group like that.
Mediaweek: You moved to Australia for the Kayo rebuild. Was the entire family on board with you coming because you’ve got a passion for an app?
Tom Blaxland: Oh, absolutely, yes. My family has been fans of Kayo for a long time, so that was not a hard sell at all.
Moving back to Australia was a pretty easy sell also – they really love it here. On a more personal note, my son actually could have gone to any school in America to go to university, but he decided to go to the University of Sydney – so he wanted to move here. It was just a perfect time for it all to come together.
Mediaweek: What is it about Kayo that was so appealing to make the move?
Tom Blaxland: There’s a few things that are unique to Kayo, but one is that the team is all here. I’ve worked with teams that are in multiple countries and it’s much easier to work in the same room than the same earth… being able to work together in the same time zone, in the same room, it’s really amazing.
And having come here and met people when I was thinking about moving, just everyone I worked with was really great at what they did. Really passionate about what they were doing and you could see kind of a vibe here that was: “This is a set of people that can do amazing things.”
The second piece, though, as I said, is that there is just an amazing set of rights here. To have over 50 sports in one app is really unique.
And then, Binge is also a very important part of the business too and the two kind-of work together.
But having the opportunity to figure out sports problems with such a large catalogue of sports, and then find amazing product experiences that wrap those together and allow people to really interact with the sports that they love, is a fairly unique opportunity in the world, basically.
Mediaweek: What is the split of Kayo viewership? I’d assume TV viewership is larger, but what is that gap?
Tom Blaxland: If you look at the amount of consumption, it is on televisions. But, obviously mobile is growing, and one of the things we’re trying to do with this new app is bridge the gap a bit and we know that you’re not always in front of your TV – there’s not always a match-on, but you’re always a sports fan. And so trying to find a way for you to interact with our content while you’re out and about, or maybe someone else has taken the remote and the TV, is an area that we think is really interesting and will probably grow the mobile usage over time.
Mediaweek: Previously you worked on [NBCUniversal US app] Peacock. This is a very different proposition in that it’s sort of a single genre on it. But are there lessons you’re able to take from Peacock, as an app which was kind of servicing so many different audiences? Obviously here you have a lot of different sports and engagement types.
Tom Blaxland: I think the learning for both of them is really, we have a lot of content. And viewers won’t necessarily like all of it. So how do you get the preference that someone has for certain content types and get them into that content early?
But then also, the secondary piece, for both platforms is: “Hey, have you heard about this other cool sport? Let me try and get you into this other cool thing that’s happening.”
We talk a lot about the different types of sports fans. Some of it is folks who are into more Australian sports. Some people are into more international sports. There’s sports like the NBA that are growing, that you obviously have younger dominant fandoms of. There’s a bit of a commitment to say: “Here’s a whole sport. Do you want to follow this now?”
We’re doing this right now with the Club World Cup, which is a new event that hasn’t happened before. And we’re seeing the traffic go up pretty dramatically as it gets more interesting as the rounds happen. It’s a moment where we can say: “Hey, here’s a whole sport you haven’t watched before.”
Mediaweek: Obviously, the Binge app seems to have largely been built off Kayo. Could we start seeing some of the features set from this Kayo rebuild on Binge?
Tom Blaxland: That’s a great question. We’re not going to talk about that right now. If there is such an event, we’ll bring you back and talk about that.
Mediaweek: [Laughs] Okay, wink, wink, got it.